


Burn

by Calais_Reno



Series: Random Strangers [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Captivity, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Don't copy to another site, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Episode: s01e03 The Great Game, Hostage Situations, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 00:10:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17611727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calais_Reno/pseuds/Calais_Reno
Summary: On the telly, John sees something that sends him back into anguished silence.Sherlock has a case, a series of crimes related only by the ticking time-bomb attached to each one.





	Burn

**Author's Note:**

> This follows the events of The Great Game, but rather sketchily.  
> Many thanks to Ariane Devere for her transcript of that episode.

I’ve put on the kettle for a second pot of tea while scanning the news for potential cases. London has never been so peaceful. I am bored enough to shoot holes in the wall, but I won’t do that. Of course I won’t. John wouldn’t like it.

Certainly he is aware that I’m bored. I’ve been grumbling for days about the lack of cases. But he doesn’t like guns going off in the flat. It makes him nervous. I can respect that.

John and I have been flatmates for three months. Though I’ve deduced many things about him in that time, I admit that I still don’t fully get his limits. There are many unexplored possibilities in the man. He has the gift of silence— invaluable in a companion, but sometimes an obstacle to understanding. I can’t ask, though. Too many questions turn him into an oyster, solitary and mute. He is a mystery that I am still unfolding.

 

It’s not the distraction I need, but John’s sister finally comes to visit us. They’ve spoken on the phone a few times. What I mean is, she talked and he listened, humming at appropriate intervals to show he was listening. She is a loud person, I deduce, one of those people whose voices are like a dentist’s drill. Whenever she calls, John sits curled up in his chair, eyes closed, phone balanced between his shoulder and his cheek. I can go into the kitchen and boil water for tea and I will still hear every word she says.

John doesn’t want her to visit, but he won’t say that. She won’t hear it. And though we have no case going on, I don’t have time for Harry Watson’s bullshit.

“So,” she says, looking her brother up and down. “Flatmates,” she says.

John nods. I bite my tongue. _Obviously._

“So,” she says.

We exchange a look, John and I. He is desperately wishing her away.

“We’re rather busy just now.” It’s a lie, but I’mhoping she’ll take the hint.

She looks at me, looks back at her brother, making some sort of deduction in her self-absorbed, alcohol-hazed brain. “You’re together,” she says.

John looks at me. “Yes,” he says. “Together.”

I drop a few more unsubtle hints, mention the money she owes him. She leaves.

 

In truth, we are living in a kind of limbo. We do not talk about what we are, what this is between us. I haven’t been in many relationships, but I’m sure this is not how things normally progress. Not that _normal_ will ever be a word used to describe Sherlock Holmes. I am, as Donovan says, a _freak_.

John Watson was once normal, I think. He dated women, went out on pub nights, kept in touch with old school mates. Being declared dead for three years swept all of that away. Now he is a man who sleeps with his flatmate and sometimes has nightmares he doesn’t talk about. He is a man who can’t initiate conversations. A man who apologises for being an inconvenience.

We’ve had what could be defined as _sex_. It just happens. In the darkness, he searches for me; I pull him towards me, wrap myself around him. He hungers to be touched— and fears it. I hold onto him like a life raft.

We ground one another. I need him as desperately as he needs me.

We don't talk about this.

Even if I could, I’m not sure I want to define what we are. I never expected to need another person the way I need John. Mentally, emotionally, physically.

What I am to him is whatever he needs. Harry is right; we are together.

 

I deduce the expensive shoes and heavy footsteps, punctuated by an umbrella point, that herald the arrival of my brother.

“No,” I say before he has the door all the way open. “I can’t.”

Mycroft stares at me pointedly. “Can’t?”

“Can’t spare the time. Too much going on.”

He follows me into the sitting room, where I settle into my chair with my tea. He looks at John, who is sitting on the floor, watching the telly. Even months after his captivity, notwithstanding his reacquaintance with chairs and sofas and beds, there are times when he seems to prefer the floor.

Mycroft takes the other chair.

John jumps up and fetches him a cup of tea, something I am too rude to do. Or just lazy. John is still grateful, I suppose, because Mycroft was the one who eventually brought him back from the dead.

“Thank you, John.” Mycroft smiles at him.

Nodding at him, John sits down on the floor, cross-legged, and drinks his own tea.

Mycroft turns his displeasure on me. “You know that I do not often bring cases to you, and that when I do, it is always something requiring your peculiar talents. Yes, dear brother, I admit you do have talents. And I am grateful for assistance you have rendered in the past, as I have previously expressed.”

 _So transparent._ “If you are expecting me to be swayed by your flattery, prepare to be disappointed,” I respond.

“This is of national importance,” he says with a greater degree of intensity. “Perhaps John can get through your stubbornness.”

Hearing his name, John smiles at Mycroft but says nothing.

“How is he treating you, Doctor? I’m sure he can be hellish to live with.”

“I’m never bored,” John says, still smiling. He turns back to the telly.

Mycroft levels his icy gaze at me once more. “ _Your_ boredom, however, is obvious.”

I’m afraid I haven’t been feigning my lack of availability very well. Had I thought it through, I might have been much more convincing. Unfortunately (for Mycroft), I don’t care.

Mycroft begins telling me the details of the case he wants me to take, but I am no longer listening. My eyes are on my flatmate.

A soft intake of breath, a stilling of movement, and then his teacup crashes to the floor.

Mycroft stops talking, frowns at John, whose face has gone blank.

On the telly, a voice translates the words of a turbaned man speaking vehemently in Pashto. _Your civilisation is dying,_ he says. _God has turned his back on you and made you our enemies…_

John stumbles to his feet and flies to the loo, slams the door. I follow. “John?”

I hear sounds of retching.

 

He nibbles at the reheated pasta I put in front of him, but does not talk. I can tell he isn’t hungry by the way he handles his fork reluctantly, setting it down between tiny bites. He doesn’t want to worry me, so he eats. I know the drill; more often he is the one setting food in front of me, insisting that I eat something, and I am the one pushing meatballs around the plate, rearranging them in lieu of actually eating them.

“It’s all right,” I say. “If you’re not hungry, don’t force yourself.”

But he does. He doesn’t like leaving food on his plate. I’ve given him a small portion, but even so, he cannot finish it.

He hasn’t spoken all day, not since the man on the telly.

After John ran from the room, Mycroft said what I had already deduced. “It’s him.”

There is still much we don’t know about John’s captors. He was rescued by American soldiers, discovered alone, chained up in a make-shift basement cell where he’d been held for three years. His only possession was the letter I wrote him. Other than scars from the shackles he wore, there were no signs of physical abuse, so he was sent to the military base at Landstuhl, checked over, found to be malnourished, but deemed healthy enough to return to the UK, where he immediately fell between the cracks of the system. After he came to live with me, it became achingly clear that he’d been psychologically abused— isolation, restraint, intimidation alternating with kindness. A recipe for Stockholm syndrome.

We don’t know why he was held so long, why he wasn’t killed. John doesn’t talk about it. He has never told me about the men who held him, but I believe that such abuse is more typical of a single captor than a group. It was clear that a group of people had inhabited the house where he was found, but he may have had contact with just one person. I have often wondered about that person.

Hearing this man’s voice has made John physically ill. My gut clenches to see his grief and fear.

“It’s him,” said Mycroft. “His captor.”

“Find him,” I told my brother. “And kill him.”

 

He’s not asleep when I slide into bed beside him. I’m not sure he wants to be touched, so I wait to see what he will do. When he first came to live with me, he didn’t like being touched, but he trusted me, of all people. Sleeping together is something we started doing because of his night terrors. Those are fewer now, but I expect them to resume after what happened today.

He scoots to the middle of the bed, his back to me, and I curl around him, try to think of words to say. “You don’t have to talk, but if you do, I’ll listen.” An obvious, ridiculous thing to say. John talks when he wants, but there’s always a limit to how much he’ll say. He doesn’t often initiate conversations.

 _I love you,_ I want to say. He already knows that. “I just want you to know,” is what I actually say.

He doesn’t speak, but I feel him nod.

 

I’ve begun a list in my mind. Things about John, things that tell me what was done to him, what he was punished for. He was not permitted anger or curiosity. He lived in silence and fear.

Sometimes I wish John would shout at me. I sense that in his prior life, he was a person who shouted. I know what happened to that John Watson, why he remains hidden, and I often wish he’d make an appearance and yell at me when I’m being stupid. But my John doesn’t shout. Four years ago he was an army captain, a member of the RAMC, on his way to save lives in Afghanistan. Surely he had to shout sometimes, give orders to others.

That John Watson might have gone out for a pint with friends, told dirty jokes, flirted with women (and men?), wept at the things he could not help. He might have gotten up an impromptu game of rugby with the other soldiers. He might have told funny stories to his patients so they would relax and let him stitch them up. He might have listened to them talk about home, and told them about his girlfriend, who married someone else. That John Watson wasn’t a timid man, I think, or a quiet one.

That’s not the man who shares my flat.

The John Watson who came back from Afghanistan speaks rarely, guards his expression, looks apologetic for taking up space. He has lived with fear for years. There is anger underneath, I think. He just hasn’t figured out what to do with it.

 

I call his counsellor, Ella; she has an opening the following day. As I sit in the waiting room, I’m thinking about creative ways to kill the man that hurt him. A sniper’s shot to the head is too quick, too merciful. I hope Mycroft’s assassins are cruel, but I’m reasonably sure they prize efficiency above all else. At the very least, I hope he has a moment of fear as he meets the assassin’s eyes. I hope they say to him, _John Watson sends greetings_ just before they pull the trigger.

After fifty minutes, he comes out. He is exhausted, I can see.The look Ella gives me tells me everything. He’s still not talking about it.

“Give it time, John,” she says.

He nods.

 

Two days later, my boredom ends abruptly. Lestrade calls, summoning me to New Scotland Yard.

Smiling at the welcome distraction, I turn to John. “Coming?”

He nods. “If you want me to.”

“Of course. I’d be lost without my random stranger.”

This merits a brief smile from him.

 

Five pips.

Twenty minutes later, I’m talking on a pink phone to a sobbing woman.

“I’m not crying… I’m typing… And this… stupid bitch… is reading it out.”

“The curtain rises,” I say softly.

John looks at me, puzzled and horrified. He wants to ask, _what do you mean?_ But he will wait for me to explain.

“I’ve been expecting this for some time,” I tell him.

“Twelve hours,” says the sobbing woman, “or I’m going… to be… so naughty.”

 

We’re in a lab at Bart’s, looking at the shoes we found in 221A. I’m running an analysis of the soil from the soles.

“Who is she?”

I’m startled, having almost forgotten that John is there. “Who?”

“The woman on the phone.” He speaks softly, almost apologetically.

I shrug and return to my analysis. “She doesn’t matter. Just a hostage. No clue there.”

He is silent, but I can tell he’s watching me, waiting.

I glance up from the microscope. I haven’t seen this look on him before. He’s distressed, maybe even angry. “She might die,” he says quietly.

“We’re in a hospital filled with people who might die, John,” I say. “I cannot do them any good by crying about it. I might be able to do this woman some good— if I can focus on these shoes and solve the riddle.”

 _A bit not good_ , I think. But really, what can I say? I’m not good at feeling sorry. I’m good at solving puzzles. The fact that this puzzle may determine whether an unknown woman lives or dies cannot be part of my process. Emotion does not help me. Sentiment is not found on the winning side.

“I will solve it,” I assure him. “She won’t die.”

Molly enters the lab, followed by a man she thinks is her new boyfriend, Jim. It might be kind to tell her that he’s gay. I keep my focus on the slide.

“Office romance,” she says. They giggle.

“Gay,” I mutter.

“What?” Molly is frowning. _Not good._

Her boyfriend is attempting to flirt with me. He ignores John.

John is not ignoring Jim. He bristles like a hedgehog. I wonder what he sees.

“Nice to meet you,” he says as he leaves.

“What do you mean, _gay_?” Molly says. She’s angry.

I decide I might as well provide evidence: hair product, underwear, and (most damning of all) his phone number. Molly storms out.

John is silent.

I look at him. “Well?”

He stares at me for a long moment, then shakes his head.

 

John hasn’t watched telly since the man shouted in Pashto. He sits in his chair, watching me pace and mutter to myself.

“Carl Powers.” I open my website and type a message in the forum:

_FOUND. Pair of trainers belonging to Carl Powers (1978-1989)._

_Botulinum toxin still present. Apply 221b Baker St_

John looks up.

“A swimmer,” I explain. “The botulinum was in the cream he used for athlete’s foot.” I grin. “Three hours before deadline. I told you I’d solve it.”

This is entirely too much fun.

 

Four pips.

It’s another day. Before my boredom returns, I am presented with a second conundrum: the case of the missing Monkford. The hostage, a young man, cries as the first did. John covers his face with his hands while we listen to the message.

Though I am preoccupied with the puzzle, a part of my brain notes, in passing, that these captives might remind John of his own captivity. The terror he hears in their voices might be the same terror that makes him scream at night.

I suggest that he sit this one out. He refuses.

“This is about you and me, Sherlock,” the man on the phone says. “We were made for each other.”

I am intrigued. “Speak to me with your own voice, then.”

“Patience,” he says.

This time, there is a free clue: _Janus Cars. The clue is in the name._

A pint of blood on the seats of the car Lestrade found. Previously frozen.

The tan lines. The twenty thousand peso note.

A service for people who want to disappear without the annoyance of actually dying.

I tell Lestrade, “Arrest Mr Ewert of Janus Cars — and Mrs Monkford.”

“I am on _fire_!” I cry.

 

Three pips.

John is the one who notices that Connie Prince’s wound was made after death. He’s a doctor, after all, though I’m not sure all doctors are familiar with the look of wounds made after death. I wonder, a bit. He is handling all of this well, I think. Maybe. Perhaps it disturbs him, but he knows. This is what I do. What _we_ do.

Again, there is a deadline, and again, we persevere.

 

John needs to eat, I decide. He’s looking rather wilted. We stop at a cafe and split a sandwich.

“Feeling better?” I ask.

He puts the last bit of crust in his mouth and nods. I sense that his disapproval is just waiting in the wings for me to make another callous statement.

“You have questions,” I prompt. “Ask.”

“Why is he doing this? Is it a game?”

“Perhaps,” I say, keeping my tone neutral. Not good to be elated about people strapped with bombs. But it is brilliant. All these puzzles, just for me.

He frowns, bites his lip. “Is it Moriarty?” That was the name the cabby said.

The phone beeps. _Lestrade_.

 

I’m talking to an old woman now. An old _blind_ woman.

“No, no, no, no!” I say. “Tell me nothing about him. Nothing.”

John is watching, his eyes wide.

“His voice... He sounded so… soft.”

Then the line is dead.

Lestrade is looking at me. “Sherlock?”

John sighs and braces his hand on the back of my chair.

I solved it. But still, people died.

 

He hasn’t spoken since it became clear that an entire block of flats has blown up when the old woman began to describe the caller’s voice.

“I solved it,” I say to him. “I’m sorry people died. I tried to stop her.“

John closes his eyes and bites his lip. “He’s bored. Like you. It’s just a game to him.”

“Perhaps.”

“You’re enjoying this,” he says. I hear disappointment in his voice.

“Will caring about them help me solve this?” I ask. “You’re angry with me.”

He doesn’t answer.

 

Two pips.

We examine another corpse, this one on the south bank of the Thames.

“Any ideas?” Lestrade asks.

“Seven,” I respond, snapping on latex gloves.

John is already examining the body. “Dead about twenty-four hours.”

Lestrade nods. “Didn’t drown, though. Not enough of the Thames in his lungs.”

“Asphyxiated,” says John. “Bruising around the nose and mouth.”

“He’s dressed for work— what kind of work?”

Lestrade shrugs. “Tube driver.”

John is quicker. “Security guard.”

We return to the Hickman Gallery. Mrs Wenceslas insists that the painting is not a fake. Obviously, she is wrong. I tell her so, but she doesn’t appreciate it, won’t admit what is obvious.

The phone beeps. I answer. “The painting’s a fake.” I am a bit triumphant, then disappointed as no one else catches the significance of my remark. “That’s why Woodbridge and Cairns were killed.”

The phone is silent.

“I can prove it,” I say. “Give me time and I’ll prove it.”

“Ten…” says a child’s voice.

“Oh, God,” says Lestrade. “It’s a kid.”

I look a the painting again.

“Nine…”

_No one can tell me the answer._

“Eight…”

_I have to solve it myself._

“Seven…”

John walks away, stands at a distance, head down.

“Woodbridge knew,” I whisper. “How?”

“Six…”

“Sherlock,” Lestrade says. “Now would be a good time—”

“Shut up!”

“Five…”

 _In the planetarium…_ “Brilliant!” I say. “Gorgeous!”

“Four…”

I type into my phone: _astronomers supernovas._

“Three…”

It’s all clear. “Oh, beautiful! I love this!”

“Two…”

“Sherlock!” Lestrade shouts. John puts his hands over his ears.

I shout into the phone. “The Van Buren Supernova!”

Everything is very still.

The boy’s voice. “Please. Is somebody there?”

 

 _One more pip_ , I think.

 

It’s evening and John is putting on his jacket.

“Where are you going?” I ask. Usually he doesn’t go out by himself at night. _Well, he’s a grown man_ , I think.

“Out,” John says. “Need some air.”

“Mm,” I say. I’m pretending to watch crap telly. “We need milk.”

He sighs. “Fine.”

He stands there for a minute. I wait until the door closes, then open my website. I type: _Found. The Bruce-Partington plans. Please collect. The pool. Midnight._

Now things will become interesting.

 

It’s going on midnight and John hasn’t returned. This worries me more than I think it should. He’s angry with me, I suppose, and needs to get away. He’s probably in some pub having a few pints. _Why shouldn’t he?_ Maybe he ran into someone he knew. He’s a soldier, not a fragile child.

His anger is more than exasperation. There is sorrow, too. I’ve been seeing it in his eyes for the past week, in the slant of his mouth, the slump of his shoulders. I have disappointed him. What can I say? People have died, but I’ve saved people as well. Every game has a cost.What would be the cost if I had refused?

I text him: _Going out for a bit. You all right?_

He doesn’t respond. I have to leave. The bomber is waiting.

 

One pip.

The lights are on inside the pool. I can hear the water gently lapping against the side of the pool, a distant dripping sound that might be a filter. The upper gallery is dark. The room is empty.

I take the memory stick out of my pocket and hold it up. “Brought you a little getting-to-know-you present. Oh, that’s what it’s all been for, hasn’t it? All your little puzzles; making me dance – all to distract me from this.”

I hear footsteps approaching, slowly, leather soles against tile. A figure steps out of the darkness into the light.

_John._

He’s wearing a green parka I don’t recognise. His hands are in his pockets. “Evening,” he says. His face is blank.

“John—” I say. “What the hell?”

“This is a turn-up, isn’t it?” His expression does not change. “Bet you never saw this coming.”

For just one fraction of a second, I think that I don’t know John Watson at all, that beneath all that reserve there has been something else. I want to weep at my own stupidity.

Then he opens his jacket and I can see the bomb strapped to his chest. A red dot appears. _Sniper in the gallery_. 

“What ... would you like me ... to make him say ... next?” His voice is flat, but I can see the anguish in his eyes. “Gottle o’ geer ... gottle o’ geer ... gottle o’ geer.”

“Stop it,” I say. The full import of what has happened hits me. John, _my John_ ; the man who survived three years of sadistic captivity before being rescued; who came to me, a man he’d never met, because he had no one and nothing else but a snarky letter I’d written him from rehab; this man who’d been traumatised again by seeing and hearing his captor on the telly—

This is my fault. It’s because of me that he’s been captured again, by another sadistic madman, that he is now facing a terrible death. Because all the while I was seeing puzzles and preening over my own brilliance, I never thought of how I was endangering John.

John, who trusts me and loves me. _My John._ _If I ever lose you…_

“Nice touch, this: the pool where little Carl died,” he says, clearly reciting what is fed to him through the earpiece. “I stopped him. I can stop John Watson too. Stop his heart.” His voice quavers on the word _heart._

“Who are you?” I shout. The pool echoes my words back to me.

I hear another set of footsteps. “I gave you my number.” The voice is soft, lilting, familiar. Suit and tie. “I thought you might call.”

 _Jim_. Molly’s boyfriend. He begins walking towards me and John.

He did all this for me. The puzzles, the bombs, the hostages. And John. He saw what I didn’t see, that John Watson, tortured by terrorists, would be the perfect target for another sadist.

“Jim Moriarty,” he says. “Hi.” He smiles, a bit puzzled. “I thought I’d made more of an impression. You see, I’m a specialist— like you.”

I understand then. “Consulting criminal. Brilliant.”

“You’re in my way,” he says. “Back off.”

“People have died,” I say.

“That’s what people DO!” He is furious, quite suddenly.

I look at John. “Are you all right?’

Jim smirks. “It’s all right, Johnny-boy. You can talk.”

John is silent. He glances at me, nods briefly. I try to imagine what is going on inside of him. Again, I wonder about his long captivity, what the man did to him. I wonder what this man, Moriarty, has done to him. The human spirit can rise above much, but after three years of constant fear, I sense that his spirit has been rubbed raw. The quiet, nervous, nearly defeated man who showed up at my flat three months ago was not far from giving up. My letter was his last scrap of hope.

The weeks he’s spent with me have raised him, a bit. But now, again, he was ambushed, possibly drugged, tied up, strapped with a bomb. All his hope was snatched away by this madman. I must give it back to him.

“John,” I say.

I can’t see his expression. He is blinking now, possibly dissociating, going to whatever mental space he hid in for three years. I have to end this, get him out of here.

I hold out the memory stick to Moriarty. “Take it.”

Moriarty smirks. “Oh. That?”

He strolls past John, grinning. He knows he’s won. Plucking the stick from my fingers, he brings it to his lips and kisses it.

John’s lips are moving, his eyes unfocused. I can hear him murmuring something, but it’s too soft to make out the words.

“Boring,” says Moriarty. He tosses the stick in the pool.

My bargaining chip is gone, rejected. Before I can figure out what comes next, John acts, grabbing Moriarty from behind, putting him into a headlock.

“Run!” he says to me. “Sherlock— run!”

I am too stunned to move. The red dot of the sniper’s rifle plays around Moriarty’s chest.

He laughs. “Isn’t he sweet? I can see why you like having him around. But then people do get so sentimental about their pets.”

John’s expression changes from determination to horror and I know what has happened. The red dot has disappeared from Moriarty’s chest. I see it from the gallery opposite and above me. It is now on my forehead.

“No!” John releases Moriarty and steps back. “Not him. Me.” His voice breaks a bit. “Shoot me.”

“John, no,” I say.

Moriarty is studying him. “Oh, my dear Sherlock— this has become interesting. Far too interesting to end so soon.” He turns to me, grinning. “You understand, don’t you? You know what will happen if you don’t leave me alone?”

“Let me guess.” I try to sound bored, though I am anything but. “I get killed.”

“Kill you? N-no, don’t be obvious. I mean, I’m going to kill you anyway some day. I don’t like to rush it, though. I’m saving it up for something special. No-no-no-no-no. If you don’t stop prying, I’ll burn you.” He glances at John briefly, then back at me, his face transformed, pure evil in his dark eyes. “I’ll burn the _heart_ out of you.”

“I’ve been reliably informed that I don’t have one.” This is what John has been thinking, that I’m heartless. It’s what he fears.

“Obviously, you do.” He pulls a gun out of his jacket pocket and aims it at John’s temple. “Generally, I don’t like getting my hands dirty, but this might be interesting.”

I raise my gun. “Don’t. You want me. Leave him out of this.”

“John Watson. Prisoner of War.” He nudges John’s head with the gun. “Abandoned, forgotten. Declared dead by your own government. Did anyone miss you, Doctor? Was anyone waiting anxiously, wondering what had happened to you?” He laughs and pushes John towards me. “Here, Sherlock. Take your random stranger home. I’ve already burned the heart out of him.”

I grab John and begin ripping the vest off him. “It’s all right, it’s all right, John,” I murmur. He stands motionless, eyes closed, breathing hard. “It’s all right.”

Moriarty stands watching, an amused smile playing on his lips. “It’s not actually Semtex, you know.”

“What?” The other vests were real, I know. The police checked every one of them—

“Did you think I was going to kill you?” He chuckles. “There are worse things than death, you know.” He nods at John. “Death can actually be a blessing.”

The vest is off. I put my arms around John, wanting him to feel that I’m here, that I care, that I’m sorry, so sorry…

“And now, your final puzzle,” he continues. “Fix your broken soldier. This time, I think he’s shattered. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put him back together again.” He turns and begins walking towards the exit.

“What have you done?” I whisper. “Oh, John…”

Moriarty pauses, turns. “Abdul Kadir Sanjari was an amateur.”

 

It’s all over by the time Lestrade and company arrive, summoned, I suspect, by Mycroft’s minions.

“What happened?” Lestrade asks me.

“The last pip,” I say, looking over at John. He has shed the jacket, is now wrapped in an orange blanket that is somehow supposed to protect him against shock. He hasn’t spoken since he said _shoot me,_ but he meets my eyes with a gaze that is haunted. “Moriarty kidnapped John.”

“Jesus, Sherlock, you shouldn’t have come here alone.”

There are a lot of things I shouldn’t have done. I regret them all. If I could rewind the previous weeks, go back to the day John stood in my flat, asking permission to use the loo, I might bundle him up and take him away somewhere safe. There are no safe places now.

“Is he all right?” Lestrade asks.

 _That’s the question, isn’t it?_ I don’t know the answer yet. I remember him grabbing Moriarty, shouting for me to run, and I’m hopeful. A broken man doesn’t do things like that.

“I’ll see.” I walk towards him. An EMT is asking him questions which he is ignoring. “He’s fine,” I tell the tech. I hold out my hand. “Let’s go home, John.”

He takes my hand, follows me into a cab, leans up against me as it pulls away, heading for Baker Street.

“You’re not broken,” I tell him. “That thing you did— that you offered to do… that was good.”

“He burned it.”

I put my arm around him, pulling him closer. “You are my heart, John. I won’t let anyone burn you.”

“The letter,” he says. “It was in my pocket. He burned it.”

He carried it with him always. He could go out by himself because it was there, reminding him that somebody was waiting for him to come back. I’ve seen the look on his face when he reads it, the tender and hopeful smile. I have seen him carefully re-folding it, tucking it back into his pocket so many times. I’ve seen him pat his pocket, feeling to see it that it’s still there. He could probably recite it from memory, but it soothed him to look at the handwriting, to feel the loved paper, weakened from so much handling. It was his talisman against all the evil done to him.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I was wrong… it wasn’t a game. Oh, John, I…” Tears fill my eyes. “I’m an idiot.”

He squeezes my hand and gives me a small smile. “I still have the letter-writer.”

His smile lets some of the tension out of me. I wipe my eyes. “Then I’ll have to start writing you more letters.”

He shrugs. “Or you could just rip my clothes off in a dark room. People might talk, though.”

My tears continue to flow, but I laugh. “People do little else.”

 

It’s after midnight when my phone buzzes. I look at the text, lie back down next to John and curl around him. He’s still awake, I know. I can feel his vigilance.

I think how best to share the news Mycroft has just sent me. “He’s dead,” I say after a heavy moment has passed.

“I thought he might be.” John sighs and I feel him relax against me. “And I’m alive.”

 _And so is Moriarty,_ I think. _No safe places._

John turns over and faces me. “We survived,” he whispers. “I’m not afraid.”


End file.
